Background and Relevant Art
Computers and computing systems have affected nearly every aspect of modern living. Computers are generally involved in work, recreation, healthcare, transportation, entertainment, household management, etc.
Further, computing system functionality can be enhanced by a computing systems ability to be interconnected to other computing systems via network connections. Network connections may include, but are not limited to, connections via wired or wireless Ethernet, cellular connections, or even computer to computer connections through serial, parallel, USB, or other connections. The connections allow a computing system to access services at other computing systems and to quickly and efficiently receive application data from other computing system.
Current networks have allowed many new and different types of devices to be networked. Additionally, there is a desire to have mobility with networked devices. Mobility continues to evolve, as smartphones and tablets are more prevalent on business enterprise networks. Many organizations that wish to leverage the opportunity to increase employee productivity are embracing the mobile work style, and enabling information workers to access enterprise resources from their mobile devices.
While this trend brings new opportunities to improve employee effectiveness, it also creates new security risks for IT administrators as in many cases an employee can store enterprise credentials (e.g. a username and password pair) on their mobile devices. For example, most mobile email clients that use Active Sync available from Microsoft Corporation of Redmond Wash. require enterprise credentials. These credentials can be easily extracted from the mobile device. For example, the device may be stolen, the device may host a mobile application that turns out to be Trojan horses that collects saved passwords or log keystrokes. This can be particularly dangerous given that often an enterprise user may use the same credentials to access most, if not all, of the resources available to the enterprise user.
The subject matter claimed herein is not limited to embodiments that solve any disadvantages or that operate only in environments such as those described above. Rather, this background is only provided to illustrate one exemplary technology area where some embodiments described herein may be practiced.